A spatially distributed. Soil, soil hydrological and agroclimatic model for the prediction of climate change in the European Community

Abstract

Most attempts to predict the effects of potential climate change on the agricultural productivity of soils have been made either for small, intensively-managed experimental sites, or alt scales and resolutions of several tens or hundreds of km. There are few predictive tools useful to the land use planner, or the policy maker, at the local or regional level, with the implications this has for spatial resolution on the ground. Within the European Community there is a large amount of detailed soil, land use and climatic data, much of it at very high resolution (tens or hundreds of metres). A very large part of these data is in digital form, and can be manipulated readily by computers, often within geographic information systems. The current project has produced a model which uses such detailed information to predict the effects of climate change on land use within the European Community. The model has been designed deliberately to make use of simple (but reliable) soil data from soil surveys, in relation to crop suitability, as well as data from experimental sites. The new model (ACCESS - Agroclimatic Change and European Soil Suitability) thus runs at two levels, which complement each other. The essential difference is one of data availability, because this affects profoundly the time steps at which the model can operate, and the level of detail with which processes can be simulated. ACCESS-I is a general approach to allow extrapolation to large areas of land, and has less intensive data requirements. It uses Ihe results of the site specific, detailed data and modelling within the second part of the model - known as ACCESS-II - for validation and calibration. If sufficient data are available, ACCESS-II can be run for large areas, but this situation is likely to be unusual, and would be more demanding in computing time.